Privacy Policy

  1. PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE 

This notice describes how and why J Sweeney Accountants Ltd (“we”, “our”, and “us”) collect and use personal data and provides information about individuals’ rights in accordance with data protection legislation. It applies to personal data provided to us, both by individuals themselves or by others. Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable living person. ‘Data protection legislation’ means all applicable privacy and data protection legislation and regulations including: before 25 May 2018, the Data Protection Act 1998; and from 25 May 2018 onwards, the GDPR, and any applicable national laws, regulations and secondary legislation in the UK relating to the processing of personal data and the privacy of electronic communications, as amended, replaced or updated from time to time; Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. 

  1. ABOUT US 

J Sweeney Accountants is an accountancy firm based in Northamptonshire and London. We are a limited company under number: 1017437 registered in England and Wales and have our registered office at 3 Deanery Court, Preston Deanery, Northampton, NN7 2DT. 

For the purpose of the Data Protection Legislation and this notice, we are the ‘data controller’. This means we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about individuals. We are required under the Data Protection Legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice. We have appointed a person with the responsibility for data protection compliance within the firm and is our Data Protection Point of Contact for assisting with enquiries regarding this privacy notice or our treatment of your personal data. Should you wish to contact our Data Protection Point of Contact you can do so using the contact details noted below.

  1. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA 

To find out more, please go to the sections of this statement that are relevant to you. 

Corporate clients (and individuals associated with our corporate clients) and personal clients we will only collect personal data necessary for agreed purposes, and we ask our clients to only share personal data where it is strictly needed for those purposes. Where we process personal data, we ask our clients to provide the necessary information to the data subjects regarding its use. We obtain personal data, for example, when: 

  • You request a proposal from us in respect of the services we provide
  • We obtain relevant information from third parties from the routine checks conducted before we accept you as a client
  • You engage us to provide our professional services and during the provision of those services
  • You contact us by email, telephone, post, portal or social media (for example when you have a query about our services)
  • Third parties (for example, Power of Attorney, executors, solicitors, previous accountants, HMRC, mortgage providers, financial advisors, stockbrokers) and/or and/or publicly available resources (for example, from Companies House). 

Suppliers 

We collect and process personal data about our suppliers, to manage the relationship, contract, to receive services from our suppliers and, where relevant, to provide professional services to our clients.

  1. THE TYPE OF PERSONAL DATA WE HOLD

We process many categories of personal data, including as appropriate for the services we are providing corporate clients (and individuals associated with our corporate clients).

Personal clients

The personal data we hold may include the following:

  • Partner or individual client details such as title, position, full name, contact details (including telephone, mobile, address, email address etc), contact details, history;
  • Family member details (if relevant to the service);
  • Dates of birth, gender and/or age;
  • Personal tax information including business accounts, income, drawings, profit shares, capital introduced, assets, investments transaction details, national insurance number, UTR number, financial transactions, tax returns, tax payments, UK residence status, bank details, marital status, PAYE tax codes, dividend vouchers, rental statements, life policy details, chargeable gain certificates, P60’s, P11D’s, consolidate tax vouchers, pension details, gift aid certificates, EIS/SEIS/VCT certificates, student loan statements, mortgage statements, spouses details, children’s details including date of birth, tax planning reports, partnership returns;
  • Copies of passport, driving licence or other identification documentation;
  • Records of your contact with us including meeting notes, telephone messages, letters, emails, portal information exchange and social media;
  • Details of related parties and transaction with them;
  • Names, payroll details (pay, national insurance numbers, tax codes, attachment of earnings, student loans, pension and other deductions) and job descriptions of your employees 
  • Transactions with you or your employees and related documentation;
  • Income, benefits or dividends paid to directors, key personnel, related parties or shareholders;
  • Details of the contract we have with you in relation to the provision, or the proposed provision, of our services; 
  • Details of any services received from us; 
  • Our correspondence and communications with you; 
  • Information about any complaints and enquiries you make to us;
  • Information we receive from other sources, such as publicly available information, information provided from third parties or information from our MGI network of firms. 
  1. HOW WE USE PERSONAL DATA

We may process personal data for purposes necessary for the performance of our professional services contract with our clients and to comply with our legal obligations. 

This may include processing personal data of an employee, subcontractor, supplier or customer of our clients or an associate of our clients. We may process personal data for the purposes of our own legitimate interests provided those interests do not override any of our clients (and individuals associated with our clients) own interests, rights and freedoms which require the protection of personal data. 

This includes processing for marketing, business development, and management purposes. We may process personal data for certain additional purposes with consent, and in these limited circumstances where an individual data subject consent is required for the processing of personal data, then the individual data subject has the right to withdraw consent to processing for such specific purposes. 

Please note we may process personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using personal data. 

Situations in which we will use personal data

We may use personal data to: 

  • Carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between our clients and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) e.g. providing advice, accounts preparation, tax returns, payroll;  
  • Carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between our clients and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) where you may be a subcontractor, supplier or customer of our client;
  • Provide information related to our services and our events and activities that are requested from us or which we feel may be of interest provided you have consented to be contacted for such purposes;  
  • Seek thoughts and opinions on the services we provide; 
  • Notify about any changes to our services.
  • In some circumstances we may anonymise or pseudonymise the personal data so it can no longer be associated to an individual, in which case we may use it without further notice to you. If an individual refuses to provide us with certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with the client. Alternatively, we may be unable to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations. We may also process personal data without the individual’s knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or permitted to do so. 

Data retention 

We will only retain personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it is collected. 

When assessing what retention period is appropriate for your personal data, we take into consideration:

  • The requirements of our business and the services provided;  
  • Any statutory or legal obligations;  
  • The purposes for which we originally collected the personal data;  
  • The lawful grounds on which we based our processing; 
  • The types of personal data we have collected; 
  • The amount and categories of your personal data; 
  • Whether the purpose of the processing could reasonably be fulfilled by other means. 
  1. DATA SHARING

We will share personal data with third parties where law requires us, where it is necessary to administer the relationship between us and our clients or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so such as:

  • Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.
  1. DATA SECURITY 

We have put in place commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

In addition, we limit access to personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify the individual and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so. 

  1. RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT

In accordance with GDPR, you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully using it.
  • Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This allows you to correct or modify any data we currently hold for you. Once you do this, we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide us with.
  • Request deletion of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no valid reason for us continuing to process it. 
  • Withdraw consent at any time when we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
  1. CHANGES TO THIS NOTICE

Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be updated on our website at www.jsweeneyaccountants.co.uk. This privacy notice was last updated March 2021. 

  1. ACCESS TO INFORMATION

If you have any questions regarding this notice or if you would like to speak to us, please email us at [email protected]

Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the GDPR.